Enrolled in arts college of the university of Minnesota
Legally changed his name august 1962
Signed to Columbia records in 1962
Introduced the Beatles to marijuana
1965-1966 is where dylans music revolutionized rock
Best albums Highway 61 revisited and blonde on blonde
Co wrote with George Harrison
He wrote slow train coming after announcing he was a born again christian
Dylan traveled to Israel and named is album infidels
In 1990 Dylan was named a Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Art et des Lettres, France's highest cultural honor
At the 1991 Grammy ceremony, where he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award, Dylan's whimsical acceptance speech and almost unintelligible performance of "Masters of War" (the first Gulf War had recently started), left some fans scratching their heads, with others applauding his pugnacious attitude.
That year he had a brush with death when he suffered a serious heart infection that landed him in the hospital for a few tense days. In 1998 he picked up three Grammys for Time Out of Mind (Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk Album, and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the track "Cold Irons Bound"), and released The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert, one of the most legendary of all live rock performances.
Although Bob Dylan contained only two originals ("Talking New York" and "Song to Woody"), Dylan stirred up the Greenwich Village folk scene with his caustic humor and gift for writing deeply resonant topical songs. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (Number 22, 1963) included the soon-to-be folk standard "Blowin' in the Wind" (a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary), "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," and "Masters of War," protest songs on par with Guthrie's and Pete Seeger's. Joan Baez, already established as a "protest singer," recorded Dylan's songs and brought him on tour; in summer 1963 they became lovers.
Dylan moved to New York City in January 1961, saying he wanted to meet Woody Guthrie, who by then was hospitalized with Huntington's chorea. Dylan visited his idol frequently. That April he played New York's Gerdes Folk City as the opening act for bluesman John Lee Hooker, with a set of Guthrie-style ballads and his own lyrics set to traditional tunes. A New York Times review by Robert Shelton alerted A&R man John Hammond, who signed Dylan to Columbia and produced his 1962 debut album.
. Another Side of Bob Dylan (Number 43), recorded in a single session on June 9, 1964 and released on August 8, concentrated on personal songs and imagistic free associations such as "Chimes of Freedom"; Dylan repudiated his protest phase with "My Back Pages." In late 1964 Columbia A&R man Jim Dickson introduced Dylan to Jim (later Roger) McGuinn, whose band the Byrds would in 1965 have its first hit with "Mr. Tambourine Man," kicking off the mid-decade folk-rock boom. Meanwhile the Dylan-Baez liaison fell apart, and Dylan met 25-year-old ex-model Shirley Noznisky, a.k.a. Sara Lowndes, whom he married in 1965.
Dylan surprised listeners for the first of many times by turning his back on folk purism; for half the album he was backed by a rock & roll band.
His lyrics were analyzed, debated, and quoted like no pop before them. With rage and slangy playfulness, Dylan chewed up and spat out literary and folk traditions in a wild, inspired doggerel. He didn't explain; he gave off-the-wall interviews and press conferences in which he'd spin contradictory fables about his background and intentions. D.A. Pennebaker's documentary of Dylan's British tour, Don't Look Back, shows some of the hysteria that came to surround him and the cool detachment with which he would always regard his celebrity. As "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35" went to Number Two in April 1966, Dylan's worldwide record sales topped Ten million, and more than 150 other groups or artists across a wide range of genres had recorded at least one of his songs.
When taken for a topical songwriter who would dutifully put his music behind party-line messages, and praised as the spokesman for a generation, he became an ambiguous, visionary poet instead.
when taken for an acoustic-guitar troubadour who was supposed to cling to old, virtuous rural sounds, he plugged in his guitar, hired a band and sneered oracular electric blues.
The CD's and the documentary both follow Mr. Dylan from his early years to his motorcycle accident in July 1966, and both focus on the two metamorphoses he made in the early 1960's: from Midwestern guitar strummer to Greenwich Village folk idol, and then, far more contentiously, from folk singer to electric rocker.
Here, once again, are the earnest, well-meaning and musically puritanical Greenwich Village folkies: in love with traditional songs and sounds, firmly believing that folk tunes and agitprop belong together, forever grappling with authenticity, and trying to be populist while disdaining pop music and pop culture. And there, again, is Mr. Dylan: repeatedly shedding his past, soaking up songs and styles, trading simple messages for oblique ones, pilfering and transforming.
But in the second half of "No Direction Home," Mr. Scorsese draws on the 1966 footage to concentrate the tension and absurdity of a tour on which Mr. Dylan faced an overheated blend of love and hatred that no other performer could have sparked.
It's a period that Mr. Dylan skips completely in his 2004 memoir, "Chronicles: Volume One," and the one that yielded, in a whirlwind of recording and touring, his three most crucial albums: "Bringing It All Back Home," "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde."
Mr. Scorsese's documentary follows Dylan as a performer, meeting audiences (and dumbfounding journalists) with misunderstood greatness.
There's some additional evidence that Mr. Dylan was always, for lack of a better word, an impurist.
The album includes his earliest known recording: "When I Got Troubles" from 1959, with the 17-year-old Bobby Zimmerman and his guitar captured by a high-school friend's tape recorder. The song is a blues that advises, "swing your troubles away," but its folky verse leads to a stop-time section straight out of Elvis Presley In the documentary, a glimpse of a yearbook shows his stated ambition: to join Little Richard.
Then he was swayed by the stark strangeness of folk songs, the poetry of the Beats and the plain-spoken conviction of Woody Guthrie, and he hitchhiked to New York City.
In Greenwich Village, he was a quick study and, at first, everybody's protégé: Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Dave Van Ronk, Joan Baez.
The first CD, with alternate and live versions from Mr. Dylan's folky years, is full of songs about moving on: "Rambler, Gambler," "I Was Young When I Left Home" and his own "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (a demo version, already perfected, recorded for the song's publisher).
From the folk singers' trove of songs, "This Land Is Your Land" is treated as a traveler's reflections rather than a singalong, and he growls "Dink's Song" (collected half a century earlier by the folklorist John A. Lomax) as if the narrator's heartbreak were his own.
Compared to some of the outlandishly overwrought folk-revival performers shown in the documentary, he comes across as natural, even artless.
Then, suddenly, he doesn't need mentors. "What I did to break away was to take simple folk changes and put new imagery and attitude to them, use catchphrases and metaphor combined with a new set of ordinances that evolved into something different that had not been heard before," he wrote in "Chronicles."
On the album, the finger pointing and moralizing of "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Masters of War," sung with quiet righteousness in performances at Town Hall in Manhattan, give way to the cascading images of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "Chimes of Freedom." Mr. Dylan was already confounding expectations: The documentary shows him at a "topical song workshop" at the Newport Folk Festival performing "Mr. Tambourine Man," while some audience members appear to wonder exactly what topic the song is supposed to be protesting. In other clips, Mr. Dylan tells interviewers he's not a topical songwriter anyway. Accepting a civil liberties award in 1963, he called politics "trivial."
"Desolation Row" would take on more gravity and bitterness; on "Tombstone Blues" the alternate tried a countryish harmony vocal. "Visions of Johanna" would get a simpler beat that opened up room for vocal nuance, while "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" would speed up and turn into a romp. "Highway 61 Revisited" already had its electric-piano flourishes, but the final take would add the hysterical edge of a siren whistle.
The film shows what happened to the songs and the songwriter on the road. Between 1965 and 1966, Mr. Dylan's last baby fat disappeared. Partly because of amphetamines that the documentary doesn't mention, he was razor-thin, and with his wildly patterned Mod clothes and an exploding hairdo, he looked purely iconic, haloed from backlighting. The 1966 tour, as Mr. Scorsese reconstructs it, was a blur of pop-star adulation, polarized crowds and inane news conferences: "All my songs are protest songs, every single one of them," Mr. Dylan bantered.
The boos didn't stop him, though he grew visibly drained. On the album, Mr. Dylan and the Hawks - whose little fills between vocal lines are as savagely funny as the lyrics - give corrosive performances of "Ballad of a Thin Man" and the climactic, scathing "Like a Rolling Stone" that followed a fan's cry of "Judas!"
Unlike the vast majority of entertainers, Mr. Dylan wasn't devoted to pleasing an audience. He didn't give them what they wanted: He gave them something better. It would all catch up with him, and quickly, and when the motorcycle accident gave him a reason to withdraw he seized it. But "No Direction Home" stops there. Contrary as Mr. Dylan was, in those brief and remarkable years, negativity pulled him through.
|| 1 Original song: 1913 Massacre (Woody Guthrie)
Dylan song: Song to Woody (February 1961) ||
|| Dylan arrived in New York City on January 24, 1961, at the age of 19. His first major composition was written on February 14, barely three weeks later. "I just thought about Woody," he commented a few years ago, looking back on the writing of this song. "I wondered about him, thought harder and wondered harder. I wrote this song in about five minutes." The tune of "Song to Woody" is identical to Woody Guthrie's "1913 Massacre" - but this appropriation is clearly intended as a tribute to his hero.
Woody Guthrie (Note 2) is reported to have said to Dylan (who visited the older singer often in hospital): "The words are the important thing. Don't worry about tunes. Take a tune - sing high when they sing low, sing fast when they sing slow, and you've got a new tune." As for the lyrics themselves, there is one couplet which has been adapted from Guthrie's "Pastures of Plenty": Every state in this union, us migrants has been We come with the dust and we go with the wind.
Pastures of Plenty
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.
Song to Woody
It is worth noting that Dylan casts the second line in the past: unlike most of the folk community at this time, he realized that the world was now drastically different from the dustbowl and depression years that Guthrie had known, and it was going to need drastically different songs to change it. If this was one of the few direct borrowings from Guthrie's work, then the general debt Dylan owed him was immense. He said himself that he was a "walking Woody Guthrie jukebox" as this time, and he has performed a sizable number of Guthrie songs over the years:
"Car Car," "Come See," "Dear Mrs. Roosevelt," "Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)," "Don't You Push Me Down," "Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad," "Grand Coulee Dam," "The Great Divide," "The Great Historical Bum," "Hangknot, Slipknot," "Hard Traveling," "Howdido," "I Ain't Got No Home," "I Want It Now," "Jesus Christ," "1913 Massacre," "Pastures of Plenty," "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Ramblin' Through the World," "Ramblin' Round," "Ranger's Command," "Sally Girl," "Talkin; Columbia," "Talkin' Fish Blues," "Talkin' Merchant Marine," "This Land Is Your Land," "VD Blues," "VD City," "VD Gunner's Blues" and "VD Waltz," as well as a great many more traditional songs such as "Buffalo Skinners" that were in Guthrie's repertoire and are occasionally credited to him.
||
2 Original song: Penny's Farm (The Bently Boys)
Dylan song: Hard Times in New York (November 1961)
|| The words and music of this song are based on "Down on Penny's Farm" (a regionalized reworking of a still older traditional song, "Hard Times") by The Bently Boys, and originally recorded in 1929. It was included in Harry Smith's seminal Anthology of American Folk Music (Folkways, 1952) and has been recorded by (among others) Happy and Artie Traum on their fine album Hard Times in the Country. ||
3 Original song: Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance (Henry Thomas)
Dylan song: Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance (April 1962)
|| "Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance" is a rewrite of a song by late-19th century singer Henry Thomas. On The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, the song is credited jointly to Thomas and Dylan. In fact, almost all the words to Dylan's version are different (and probably written by Dylan) except for the title, and the tune has also undergone some modifications. The introductory verse to Thomas' version is a clear indication that this is a "composed" as opposed to a "folk" song. Thomas was born in 1874 or 75 (he died in 1930) and although he was not among the first blues singers to record, he is probably the oldest "professional" blues singer to have been captured on disc. Like many such singers, he was actually a songster (Note 3), blues being just one of many styles that he performed. ||
4 Original song: Corrina Corrine (trad)
Dylan song: Corrina Corrina (April 1962)
|| "Corrina Corrine" (also known as "Corrina Corrina") is a black American folksong that was often played by Mississippi John Hurt, Mance Lipscomb, Sleepy John Estes and others. However, Dylan's version is more than just an "arrangement," the melody and whole mood of the song being totally different - from a happy-go-lucky jug band song, it becomes a wistful evocation of the memory of a woman. The verse beginning: "I have a bird to whistle" is actually adapted from Robert Johnson's "Stones in My Passway." ||
5 Original song: No More Auction Blues (trad)
Dylan song: Blowin' in the Wind (April 1962)
|| The tune of "Blowin' in the Wind" was (according to Dylan) based loosely on the traditional "No More Auction Blues," found on The Bootleg Series 1-3 (Note 4). The guitar part is certainly very similar, though I had listened to both songs many times without noticing the resemblance. The song, also known as "Many Thousands Gone," originated in Canada, where many blacks fled after Britain abolished slavery there in 1833, 30 years ahead of the United States. Dylan probably learned this one from Odetta, who sang it on her live Carnegie Hall album which was recorded on April 8, 1960. Paul Robson also recorded it in 1958. ||
6 Original song: O Western Wind (trad)
Dylan song: Tomorrow is a Long Time (August 1962)
|| There is a definite connection between the chorus of Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" and "Westron Winde" (Western Wind,) dated c1530.
Westron winde, when will thou blow The smalle raine downe can raine Christ, if my love were in my armes And I in my bed againe
Westron Winde
Yes, and only if my own true love was waitin', Yes, and if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin', Only if she was lyin' by me, Then I'd lie in my bed once again.
Tomorrow Is a Long Time
According to Timothy J. Lundgren, "This is one of the most famous early English lyrics. It is usually dated as "early 16th century" although these things are notoriously difficult to date with much confidence. This poem is widely anthologized, and it is not too surprising that Dylan ran across it."
||
7 Original song: Lord Randal (trad)
Dylan song: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (September 1962)
|| The lyrical structure of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" was based on "Lord Randal" (Child ballad No. 12) (Note 5) which he learnt from Martin Carthy. (For more on Carthy, see below.)
"Oh, where ha' you been, Lord Randal my son? And where ha' you been, my handsome young man?" "I ha' been at the greenwood, mother, make my bed soon For I'm wearied wi' hunting, and fain was lie down."
Lord Randal
Oh, where have you been,my blue-eyed son? And where have you been, my darling young one?
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
There are many versions of this song (15 alone collected in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads), but all follow the same basic question/answer structure. The surrealistic flood of images that makes up the "blue-eyed" son's reply to the inquiry has no connection to "Lord Randal." In fact, is probably owes more to Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" than to anything that might be found in song.(Note 6)
||
8 Original song: Scarlet Ribbons For Her Hair (trad),
Who'll Buy You Ribbons When I'm Gone (Paul Clayton)
|| Paul Clayton based his own composition on the traditional song "Scarlet Ribbons For Her Hair," and Dylan's song could have been based on either or both. Clayton obviously felt that his song was where Dylan had got it, and had his lawyers make inquiries. According to Robert Shelton, "Clayton and Dylan had an amicable legal tiff, settling without rancor out of court." (No Direction Home by Robert Shelton, page 156).
Johnny Cash's "Understand Your Man" is sometimes cited as an influence on "Don't Think Twice," but actually that song was also based on "Scarlet Ribbons For Her Hair," hence the similarities. It ain't no use to sit and sigh now, darlin, And it ain't no use to sit and cry now, T'ain't no use to sit and wonder why, darlin, Just wonder who's gonna buy you ribbons when I'm gone.
Who's Goin' Buy You Ribbons When I'm Gone?
It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe It don't matter, anyhow An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe If you don't know by now
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
So I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, You're the one that made me travel on, But still-I-can't-help wonderin' on my way, Who's gonna buy you ribbons when I'm gone?
Who's Goin' Buy You Ribbons When I'm Gone?
I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe Where I'm bound, I can't tell But good-bye's too good a word, gal So I'll just say fare thee well
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
While Dylan's debt is clear here, the actual achievement of "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" far outstrips its precursors. This is one of the finest examples of the kind of song in which the narrator is lying to himself and unknowingly telling far more of his emotional struggles than he himself is aware of. Other notable examples of this type of song would include Hoagy Carmichael's "I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)," Loudon Waiwright III's "I'm Alright," Dylan's own "Most of the Time," and almost the entire output of Randy Newman.(Note 7)
||
9 Original song: Scarborough Fair (trad. arr. Martin Carthy)
Dylan song: Girl From the North Country (January 1963)
|| Dylan mentioned Martin Carthy in the sleeve notes to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and also said in 1984: "Martin Carthy's incredible. I learned a lot of stuff from Martin. 'Girl From the North Country' is based on a song I learned from him."
The song that "Girl From the North Country" was based on is "Scarborough Fair," and Carthy's arrangement is found on his eponymous debut album. Martin Carthy has expressed bitterness about Paul Simon's lifting the song since Simon failed to acknowledge or credit Carthy for the arrangement, but none towards Dylan for his more "creative" adaptation.
I had the opportunity to talk to Martin Carthy (who visited Tokyo in 1995), and he spoke at length about Paul Simon's appropriation - Simon had even gone so far as to release "Scarborough Fair" with words and music credited to himself at one point.
Concerning the similarity between "Scarborough Fair" and Dylan's "Girl From the North Country," Carthy stated: "That was completely different, completely legitimate. Bob never hid anything. And he made his own song from it. That's what folk music is all about. He'd always be asking me, 'Martin, play 'Scarborough Fair,' play 'Scarborough Fair.' He was in England to appear in a TV play, Madhouse On Castle Street, for the BBC, and he was over for a few months, I think. He went over to Portugal or somewhere for a few days, and when he came back he said he had a new song. He played me this thing, and when he got to 'She was once a true friend of mine,' he burst into laughter and said something like 'Oh I can't do that one in front of you!' and then he started playing something else."
||
10 Original song: Nottamun Town (trad)
Dylan song: Masters of War (January 1963)
|| The tune of "Masters of War" is based on the traditional "Nottamun Town," believed to be an old magic song from an English mummers' play. The great Scottish folk singer Jean Ritchie affixed the copyright of her Geordie Music Publishing Company on "Nottamun" in 1964. Geordie made claims against Dylan for use of the melody but he successfully maintained that his variant and his totally original words made a new song. ||
11 Original song: The Leaving of Liverpool (trad)
Dylan song: Farewell (January 1963)
|| Dylan's song is so similar in tune and many of the words that it should be considered more as an adaptation than an original song. A number of performances by Dylan of this song exist, but it has never been officially released.
I'm bound off for California By the way of stormy Cape Horn And I'm bound to write you a letter, love When I am homeward bound So fare thee well, my own true love When I return united we will be It's not the leaving of Liverpool that's grieving me But my darling when I think of thee
The Leaving of Liverpool
Oh it's fare thee well my darlin' true, I'm leavin' in the first hour of the morn. I'm bound off for the bay of Mexico Or maybe the coast of Californ. So it's fare thee well my own true love, We'll meet another day, another time. It ain't the leavin' that's a-grievin' me But my true love who's bound to stay behind.
Farewell
||
12 Original song: Lord Franklin (trad)
Dylan song: Bob Dylan's Dream (February 1963)
|| The tune and words of "Bob Dylan's Dream" come from "Lord Franklin," another song which he learnt from Carthy during his first visit to England. Dylan had been brought over from the U.S. by the B.B.C. to sing a few songs and have a bit part in Madhouse On Castle Street, a TV play that unfortunately was not preserved, BBC having a bad habit of wiping historically invaluable tape. (They also wiped the two 1965 performances that Albert Grossman can be seen negotiating in the documentary Don't Look Back.) Dylan sang his own "Blowin' in the Wind," as well as the traditional songs "Ballad of the Gliding Swan," "Hang Me, Oh Hang Me," "Cuckoo Bird" and an untitled instrumental. Only the first two of these are known to exist on audio tape. ||
12 Original song: The Patriot Game (words: Dominic Behan, music: trad)
Dylan song: With God on Our Side (April 1963)
|| Talking about the genesis of this song on a radio broadcast some years ago, Liam Clancy (of The Clancy Brothers) said:
"'The Patriot Game' was written by Dominic Behan, but it was originally a song from the Appalachian Mountains ('The Merry Month Of May'). Then it became a popular song, slightly adapted by a popular singer of the day named Joe Stafford who called it the - What was it called? 'The Bold Grenadier,' or something.
And it was from that popular recording that Dominic Behan took the tune and he made it into 'The Patriot Game.' And of course we used to sing this with great passion at the folk clubs in the (Greenwich) Village. And among the patrons was a young singer/songwriter who came into town named Bob Dylan. And he transformed it, of course, into 'With God on Our Side.'" Actually Dominic Behan chided Dylan publicly for lifting Behan's melody until he was reminded that he himself had "borrowed" the tune. As for the phrase "God on our side," it might have come from Robert Southey ("The laws are with us and God's on our side") or from George Bernard Shaw's play Saint Joan.
||
13 Original song: Who Killed Cock Robin (trad)
Dylan song: Who Killed Davey Moore (April 1963)
|| "Who Killed Cock Robin" is a haunting children's song that can be found in many versions stretching back to antiquity. Dylan directly adapted the structure for this song on the death of Davey Moore, a boxer who was knocked out by Sugar Ramos on March 23, 1963 and died two days later without having regained consciousness. Dylan's first performance of this song was on April 12, just 18 days later. ||
14 Original song: The Wind and the Rain (trad)
Dylan song: Percy's Song (August 1963)
|| According to Dylan, the beautiful melody line of this song came from Paul Clayton. "Paul was just an incredible songwriter and singer," said Dylan in 1985. "He must have known a thousand songs. I learned 'Pay Day at Coal Creek' and a bunch of other songs from him. We played on the same circuit and I traveled with him part of the time. When you're listening to songs night after night, some of them rub off on you. 'Don't Think Twice' was a riff that Paul had. [See above.] And so was 'Percy's Song.'
Something I might have written might have been a take off on 'Hiram Hubbard,' a civil war song he used to sing, but I don't know. A song like that would come to me because people were talking about the incident. A lot of folk songs are written from a character's point of view. 'House of the Rising Sun' is actually from a woman's point of view. A lot of Irish ballads would be the same thing. A song like Percy's Song, you'd just assume another character's point of view. I did a few like that."
As for the words, Dylan has clearly borrowed the structure from "The Wind and the Rain" (also known as "Two Sisters"), though the stories in the two songs are unrelated. The first verses of the two songs share a similar refrain: Two loving sisters was a-walking side by side, Oh the wind and rain. One pushed the other off in the waters, waters deep. And she cried, "The dreadful wind and rain."
The Wind and the Rain
Bad news, bad news come to me where I sleep, Turn, turn, turn again. Sayin' one of your friends is in trouble deep, Turn, turn to the rain and the wind.
Percy's Song while the final verses are even more closely related:
The only tune that my fiddle would play, Was, "Oh, the wind and the rain." The only tune that my fiddle would play, was Was, "The dreadful wind and rain."
The Wind and the Rain
And I played my guitar through the night to the day, Turn, turn, turn again. And the only tune my guitar could play Was, "Oh the cruel rain and the wind."
Percy's Song
||
15 Original song: Anathea (words: Neil Roth, music: Lydia Wood)
Dylan song: Seven Curses (August 1963)
|| The song "Anathea" tells a similar story to "Seven Curses." To quote the late John Bauldie: "The song's story is as old as the hills - the tale used by Shakespeare for Measure for Measure is an obvious variant - and it's been told in folk song many times down the years, under such titles as 'The Prickley Bush,' 'The Briery Bush,' and 'The Prickle Holly Bush.' Perhaps the earliest version is the Child Ballad number 95, 'The Maid Freed From the Gallows,' but it seems likely that Dylan's direct source was a song called "Anathea," often performed by Judy Collins, whom Dylan knew well at this time." (From Bauldie's notes for The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3)
When asked about this, Judy Collins agreed: "Absolutely, the seven curses are related to Anathea. There are old themes, world themes, centuries' old dramas that get worked out in the creative process by artist after artist. I see what Dylan has always done is to connect with this inner, subterranean river of the subconscious."
||
16 Original song: The Parting Glass (trad)
Dylan song: Restless Farewell (October 1963)
|| The tune and lyrics to "Restless Farewell" were both based on "The Parting Glass," a traditional Irish song that he probably learnt from The Clancy Brothers.
O, all the money e'er I had I spent it in good company And all the harm I've ever done Alas! it was to none but me.
The Parting Glass
Oh all the money that in my whole life I did spend, Be it mine right or wrongfully, I let it slip gladly past the hands of my friends To tie up the time most forcefully.
Restless Farewell
Dylan reportedly wrote this song hastily in the studio as a suitable closer to his 1964 album, The Times They Are A-Changin' album and did not perform it again until 1995 when Frank Sinatra requested it as the closing song in his 80th Birthday Concert. Although some of the lines are clumsy (particularly when compared to the graceful original), it still made for a far more touching declaration of independence than "My Way."
||
17 Original song: Jack O'Diamonds (Mance Lipscomb)
Dylan song: Jack O'Diamonds (1964)
|| "Jack O'Diamonds" was one of the "some other kind of songs" poems printed on the sleeve of Another Side of Bob Dylan and set to music by Fairport Convention, though Fairport's music has little connection with the original Mance Lipscomb version.
Mance Lipscomb wrote "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" (also known as "Baby, Let Me Lay It on You") which Dylan sang on his debut album. Lipscomb claims to have taught the song to Dylan while Dylan states (in a spoken introduction on the album) that he learnt it from Rick von Schmidt.
For more information on Mance Lipscomb, go to his marvellous autobiography (published by Norton) I Say Me For A Parable, or to any of his recordings released on CD by Arhoolie.
||
18 Original song: Too Much Monkey Business (Chuck Berry)
Dylan song: Subterranean Homesick Blues (January 1965)
|| By 1965, Dylan had absorbed an enormous amount of traditional and quasi-traditional material, but it is from this time that we see him start to incorporate the influence of more contemporary works. Chuck Berry has, with good reason, been called the first poet of rock and roll, and his "Too Much Monkey Business" (1957) is a perfect example of his mastery of colloquial American English. Dylan takes Berry's rapid-fire approach to the language and ups the stakes:
Workin' in the fillin' station Too many tasks Wipe the windows Check the tires Check the oil Dollar gas!
Too Much Monkey Business
Ah get born, keep warm, Short pants, romance. Learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed Try to be a success. Please her, please him, buy gifts Don't steal, don't lift - Twenty years of schoolin' And they put you on the day shift
Subterranean Homesick Blues
||
19 Original song: Nine Below Zero (Sonny Boy Williamson)
Dylan song: Outlaw Blues (January 1965)
|| The only direct connection here is the phrase "nine below zero," but Dylan almost certainly got this from Williamson. Why? Listen to what else he got from him. Although the tune to "Pledging My Time" is related (as noted below) to Robert Johnson's "Come On In My Kitchen," the feel of it (and of many of Dylan's electric blues songs) definitely comes from "Nine Below Zero," and other songs recorded by Williamson from the early 1950s to 1963. ||
20 Original song: Baby Blue (Gene Vincent)
Dylan song: It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (January 1965)
|| "I had carried that song around in my head for a long time," said Dylan, "and I remember that when I was writing it, I'd remembered a Gene Vincent song. It had always been one of my favorites, Baby Blue...`when first I met my baby, she said how do you do, she looked into my eyes and said... my name is Baby Blue.' It was one of the songs I used to sing back in High School. Of course, I was singing about a different Baby Blue." Apart from the inspiration that the song might have given to Dylan, there is no relationship between the songs beyond the name, Baby Blue. ||
Following his graduation in 1959, he began studying art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. While at college, he started performing folk songs at coffeehouses under the name Bob Dylan, taking his last name from the poet Dylan Thomas. Already inspired by Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie, Dylan began listening to blues while at college, and the genre weaved its way into his music.
Dylan spent the summer of 1960 in Denver, where he met bluesman Jesse Fuller, the inspiration behind the songwriter's signature harmonica rack and guitar. By the time he returned to Minneapolis in the fall, he had grown substantially as a performer and was determined to become a professional musician.
Dylan made his way to New York City in January of 1961, immediately making a substantial impression on the folk community of Greenwich Village. He began visiting his idol Woody Guthrie in the hospital, where he was slowly dying from Huntington's chorea. Dylan also began performing in coffeehouses, and his rough charisma won him a significant following.
In April, he opened for John Lee Hooker at Gerde's Folk City. Five months later, Dylan performed another concert at the venue, which was reviewed positively by Robert Shelton in the New York Times. Columbia A&R man John Hammond sought out Dylan on the strength of the review, and signed the songwriter in the fall of 1961. Hammond produced Dylan's debut album, released in March 1962, a collection of folk and blues standards that boasted only two original songs.
Over the course of the year, Dylan began to write a large batch of original tunes, many of which were political protest songs in the vein of his Greenwich contemporaries. These songs were showcased on his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Before its release, Freewheelin' went through several incarnations.
Dylan had recorded a rock & roll single, "Mixed Up Confusion," at the end of 1962, but his manager Albert Grossman made sure the record was deleted because he wanted to present Dylan as an acoustic folkie. Similarly, several tracks with a full backing band that were recorded for Freewheelin' were scrapped before the album's release. Furthermore, several tracks recorded for the album -- including "Talking John Birch Society Blues" -- were eliminated from the album.
Comprised entirely of original songs, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" made a huge impact in the U.S. folk community, and many performers began covering songs from the album. Of these, the most significant were Peter, Paul & Mary, who made "Blowin' in the Wind" into a huge pop hit in the summer of 1963 and thereby made Bob Dylan into a recognizable household name.
On the strength of Peter, Paul & Mary's cover and his opening gigs for popular folkie Joan Baez, "Freewheelin'" became a hit in the fall of 1963, climbing to number 23 on the charts. By that point, Baez and Dylan had become romantically involved, and she was beginning to record his songs frequently. Dylan was writing just as fast, and was performing hundreds of concerts a year.
By the time "The Times They Are A-Changin'" was released in early 1964, Dylan's songwriting had developed far beyond that of his New York peers. Heavily inspired by poets like Arthur Rimbaud and John Keats, his writing took on a more literate and evocative quality. Around the same time, he began to expand his musical boundaries, adding more blues and R&B influences to his songs.
Released in the fall of 1964, "Another Side of Bob Dylan" made these changes evident. However, Dylan was moving faster than his records could indicate. By the end of 1965, he had ended his romantic relationship with Baez and had begun dating a former model named Sara Lowndes. Simultaneously, he gave the Byrds "Mr. Tambourine Man" to record for their debut album. The Byrds gave the song a ringing, electric arrangement, but by the time the single became a hit, Dylan was already exploring his own brand of folk-rock.
Inspired by the British Invasion, particularly the Animals' version of "House of the Rising Sun," Dylan recorded a set of original songs backed by a loud rock & roll band for his next album. While "Bringing It All Back Home" (March 1965) still had a side of acoustic material, it made clear that Dylan had turned his back on folk music.
For the folk audience, the true breaking point arrived a few months after the album's release, when he played the Newport Folk Festival supported by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The audience greeted him with vicious derision, but he had already been accepted by the growing rock & roll community, as well as the mainstream press, who were fascinated by his witty, surreal and caustic press conferences. Dylan's spring tour of Britain was the basis for D.A. Pennebaker's documentary, "Don't Look Back", a film that captures the songwriter's edgy charisma and charm.
Dylan made his breakthrough to the pop audience in the summer of 1965, when "Like a Rolling Stone" became a number two hit. Driven by a circular organ riff and a steady beat, the six-minute single broke the barrier of the three-minute pop single. Dylan became the subject of innumerable articles, and his lyrics became the subject of literay analyzations across the US and UK.
Well over 100 artists covered his songs between 1964 and 1966; the Byrds and the Turtles in particular, had big hits with his compositions. "Highway 61 Revisited", his first full-fledged rock & roll album, became a Top Ten hit upon its fall 1965 release. Singles from the album, "Positively 4th Street" (#12) and "Rainy Day Women" (#35) became Top Forty hits in the fall of 1965 and spring of 1966, respectively. Following the May 1966 release of the double-album "Blonde on Blonde", he had sold over 10 million records around the world.
Late in 1965, Dylan hired the Hawks, formerly Ronnie Hawkins' backing group, as his touring band. The Hawks, who changed their name to "the Band" in 1968, would become Dylan's most famous backing band, primarily because of their intuitive chemistry and "wild, thin mercury sound," but also because of their British tour in the spring of 1966.
The tour was the first time Britain had heard the electric Dylan, and their reaction was disagreeable and violent. At the tour's opening date, an audience member called Dylan "Judas," inspiring a positively vicious version of "Like a Rolling Stone" from the Band. The performance was immortalized on countless bootleg albums (an official release finally surfaced in 1998), and it indicates the intensity of Dylan in the middle of 1966.
Following the British tour, he returned to America, where on July 29, 1966, he was injured in a motorcycle accident outside of his home in Woodstock, New York home, suffering injuries to his neck vertebrae and a concussion. Details of the accident remain elusive, he was reportedly in critical condition for a week and had amnesia, and some biographers have questioned its severity, but the event was a pivotal turning point in his career.
After the accident, Dylan became a recluse, disappearing into his home in Woodstock and raising his family with his wife, Sara. After a few months, he retreated with the Band to a rented house, subsequently dubbed Big Pink, in Bearsville to record a number of demos.
For several months, Dylan and the Band recorded an enormous amount of material, ranging from old folk, country and blues songs to newly-written originals. The songs indicated that Dylan's songwriting had undergone a metamorphosis, becoming streamlined and more direct. Similarly, his music had changed, owing less to traditional rock & roll, and demonstrating heavy country, blues and traditional folk influences. None of the Big Pink recordings were intended to be released, but tapes from the sessions were circulated by Dylan's music publisher with the intent of generating cover versions. Copies of these tapes, as well as other songs, were available on illegal bootleg albums by the end of the '60s; it was the first time that bootleg copies of unreleased recordings became widely circulated. Portions of the tapes were officially released in 1975 as the double-album The Basement Tapes.
While Dylan was in seclusion, rock & roll had become heavier and artier in the wake of the psychedelic revolution. When Dylan returned with "John Wesley Harding" in December of 1967, its quiet, country ambience was a surprise to the general public, but it was a significant hit, peaking at number two in the US and number one in the UK. Furthermore, the record arguably became the first significant country-rock record to be released, setting the stage for efforts by the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers later in 1968.
Kemp, Mark, and Wenner, Jann. "Bob Dylan Biography." Rolling Stone April 12 2010: 1. Print.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artist/news/;kw=[artists,5007,16273,16343]
New York Times
Pareles, Jon. "The Contrarian of a Generation, Revisited." New York Times August 30, 2005, Print.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/arts/music/30dyla.html
Dylan Influences
Zuckerman, Matthew. "Dylan Influences." Expectingrain. Karl Eric Anderson, Thursday, 20 Feb 1997 20:30:22. Web. 29 Apr 2010. <http://expectingrain.com/dok/div/influences.html>.
http://expectingrain.com/dok/div/influences.html
- || 1 Original song: 1913 Massacre (Woody Guthrie)
Woody Guthrie (Note 2) is reported to have said to Dylan (who visited the older singer often in hospital): "The words are the important thing. Don't worry about tunes. Take a tune - sing high when they sing low, sing fast when they sing slow, and you've got a new tune." As for the lyrics themselves, there is one couplet which has been adapted from Guthrie's "Pastures of Plenty":Dylan song: Song to Woody (February 1961) ||
|| Dylan arrived in New York City on January 24, 1961, at the age of 19. His first major composition was written on February 14, barely three weeks later. "I just thought about Woody," he commented a few years ago, looking back on the writing of this song. "I wondered about him, thought harder and wondered harder. I wrote this song in about five minutes." The tune of "Song to Woody" is identical to Woody Guthrie's "1913 Massacre" - but this appropriation is clearly intended as a tribute to his hero.
Every state in this union, us migrants has been We come with the dust and we go with the wind.
- Pastures of Plenty
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.- Song to Woody
It is worth noting that Dylan casts the second line in the past: unlike most of the folk community at this time, he realized that the world was now drastically different from the dustbowl and depression years that Guthrie had known, and it was going to need drastically different songs to change it. If this was one of the few direct borrowings from Guthrie's work, then the general debt Dylan owed him was immense. He said himself that he was a "walking Woody Guthrie jukebox" as this time, and he has performed a sizable number of Guthrie songs over the years:"Car Car," "Come See," "Dear Mrs. Roosevelt," "Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)," "Don't You Push Me Down," "Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad," "Grand Coulee Dam," "The Great Divide," "The Great Historical Bum," "Hangknot, Slipknot," "Hard Traveling," "Howdido," "I Ain't Got No Home," "I Want It Now," "Jesus Christ," "1913 Massacre," "Pastures of Plenty," "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Ramblin' Through the World," "Ramblin' Round," "Ranger's Command," "Sally Girl," "Talkin; Columbia," "Talkin' Fish Blues," "Talkin' Merchant Marine," "This Land Is Your Land," "VD Blues," "VD City," "VD Gunner's Blues" and "VD Waltz," as well as a great many more traditional songs such as "Buffalo Skinners" that were in Guthrie's repertoire and are occasionally credited to him.
||
- || There is a definite connection between the chorus of Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" and "Westron Winde" (Western Wind,) dated c1530.
Westron winde, when will thou blow The smalle raine downe can raine Christ, if my love were in my armes And I in my bed againe- Westron Winde
Yes, and only if my own true love was waitin', Yes, and if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin', Only if she was lyin' by me, Then I'd lie in my bed once again.- Tomorrow Is a Long Time
According to Timothy J. Lundgren, "This is one of the most famous early English lyrics. It is usually dated as "early 16th century" although these things are notoriously difficult to date with much confidence. This poem is widely anthologized, and it is not too surprising that Dylan ran across it."||
- || The lyrical structure of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" was based on "Lord Randal" (Child ballad No. 12) (Note 5) which he learnt from Martin Carthy. (For more on Carthy, see below.)
"Oh, where ha' you been, Lord Randal my son? And where ha' you been, my handsome young man?" "I ha' been at the greenwood, mother, make my bed soon For I'm wearied wi' hunting, and fain was lie down."- Lord Randal
Oh, where have you been,my blue-eyed son? And where have you been, my darling young one?- A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
There are many versions of this song (15 alone collected in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads), but all follow the same basic question/answer structure. The surrealistic flood of images that makes up the "blue-eyed" son's reply to the inquiry has no connection to "Lord Randal." In fact, is probably owes more to Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" than to anything that might be found in song.(Note 6)||
- || Paul Clayton based his own composition on the traditional song "Scarlet Ribbons For Her Hair," and Dylan's song could have been based on either or both. Clayton obviously felt that his song was where Dylan had got it, and had his lawyers make inquiries. According to Robert Shelton, "Clayton and Dylan had an amicable legal tiff, settling without rancor out of court." (No Direction Home by Robert Shelton, page 156).
Johnny Cash's "Understand Your Man" is sometimes cited as an influence on "Don't Think Twice," but actually that song was also based on "Scarlet Ribbons For Her Hair," hence the similarities.It ain't no use to sit and sigh now, darlin, And it ain't no use to sit and cry now, T'ain't no use to sit and wonder why, darlin, Just wonder who's gonna buy you ribbons when I'm gone.
- Who's Goin' Buy You Ribbons When I'm Gone?
It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe It don't matter, anyhow An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe If you don't know by now- Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
So I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, You're the one that made me travel on, But still-I-can't-help wonderin' on my way, Who's gonna buy you ribbons when I'm gone?- Who's Goin' Buy You Ribbons When I'm Gone?
I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe Where I'm bound, I can't tell But good-bye's too good a word, gal So I'll just say fare thee well- Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
While Dylan's debt is clear here, the actual achievement of "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" far outstrips its precursors. This is one of the finest examples of the kind of song in which the narrator is lying to himself and unknowingly telling far more of his emotional struggles than he himself is aware of. Other notable examples of this type of song would include Hoagy Carmichael's "I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)," Loudon Waiwright III's "I'm Alright," Dylan's own "Most of the Time," and almost the entire output of Randy Newman.(Note 7)||
- || Dylan mentioned Martin Carthy in the sleeve notes to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and also said in 1984: "Martin Carthy's incredible. I learned a lot of stuff from Martin. 'Girl From the North Country' is based on a song I learned from him."
The song that "Girl From the North Country" was based on is "Scarborough Fair," and Carthy's arrangement is found on his eponymous debut album. Martin Carthy has expressed bitterness about Paul Simon's lifting the song since Simon failed to acknowledge or credit Carthy for the arrangement, but none towards Dylan for his more "creative" adaptation.I had the opportunity to talk to Martin Carthy (who visited Tokyo in 1995), and he spoke at length about Paul Simon's appropriation - Simon had even gone so far as to release "Scarborough Fair" with words and music credited to himself at one point.
Concerning the similarity between "Scarborough Fair" and Dylan's "Girl From the North Country," Carthy stated: "That was completely different, completely legitimate. Bob never hid anything. And he made his own song from it. That's what folk music is all about. He'd always be asking me, 'Martin, play 'Scarborough Fair,' play 'Scarborough Fair.' He was in England to appear in a TV play, Madhouse On Castle Street, for the BBC, and he was over for a few months, I think. He went over to Portugal or somewhere for a few days, and when he came back he said he had a new song. He played me this thing, and when he got to 'She was once a true friend of mine,' he burst into laughter and said something like 'Oh I can't do that one in front of you!' and then he started playing something else."
||
- || Dylan's song is so similar in tune and many of the words that it should be considered more as an adaptation than an original song. A number of performances by Dylan of this song exist, but it has never been officially released.
I'm bound off for California By the way of stormy Cape Horn And I'm bound to write you a letter, love When I am homeward bound So fare thee well, my own true love When I return united we will be It's not the leaving of Liverpool that's grieving me But my darling when I think of thee- The Leaving of Liverpool
Oh it's fare thee well my darlin' true, I'm leavin' in the first hour of the morn. I'm bound off for the bay of Mexico Or maybe the coast of Californ. So it's fare thee well my own true love, We'll meet another day, another time. It ain't the leavin' that's a-grievin' me But my true love who's bound to stay behind.- Farewell
||- || Talking about the genesis of this song on a radio broadcast some years ago, Liam Clancy (of The Clancy Brothers) said:
"'The Patriot Game' was written by Dominic Behan, but it was originally a song from the Appalachian Mountains ('The Merry Month Of May'). Then it became a popular song, slightly adapted by a popular singer of the day named Joe Stafford who called it the - What was it called? 'The Bold Grenadier,' or something.And it was from that popular recording that Dominic Behan took the tune and he made it into 'The Patriot Game.' And of course we used to sing this with great passion at the folk clubs in the (Greenwich) Village. And among the patrons was a young singer/songwriter who came into town named Bob Dylan. And he transformed it, of course, into 'With God on Our Side.'" Actually Dominic Behan chided Dylan publicly for lifting Behan's melody until he was reminded that he himself had "borrowed" the tune. As for the phrase "God on our side," it might have come from Robert Southey ("The laws are with us and God's on our side") or from George Bernard Shaw's play Saint Joan.
||
- || According to Dylan, the beautiful melody line of this song came from Paul Clayton. "Paul was just an incredible songwriter and singer," said Dylan in 1985. "He must have known a thousand songs. I learned 'Pay Day at Coal Creek' and a bunch of other songs from him. We played on the same circuit and I traveled with him part of the time. When you're listening to songs night after night, some of them rub off on you. 'Don't Think Twice' was a riff that Paul had. [See above.] And so was 'Percy's Song.'
Something I might have written might have been a take off on 'Hiram Hubbard,' a civil war song he used to sing, but I don't know. A song like that would come to me because people were talking about the incident. A lot of folk songs are written from a character's point of view. 'House of the Rising Sun' is actually from a woman's point of view. A lot of Irish ballads would be the same thing. A song like Percy's Song, you'd just assume another character's point of view. I did a few like that."As for the words, Dylan has clearly borrowed the structure from "The Wind and the Rain" (also known as "Two Sisters"), though the stories in the two songs are unrelated. The first verses of the two songs share a similar refrain:
Two loving sisters was a-walking side by side, Oh the wind and rain. One pushed the other off in the waters, waters deep. And she cried, "The dreadful wind and rain."
- The Wind and the Rain
Bad news, bad news come to me where I sleep, Turn, turn, turn again. Sayin' one of your friends is in trouble deep, Turn, turn to the rain and the wind.- Percy's Song while the final verses are even more closely related:
The only tune that my fiddle would play, Was, "Oh, the wind and the rain." The only tune that my fiddle would play, was Was, "The dreadful wind and rain."- The Wind and the Rain
And I played my guitar through the night to the day, Turn, turn, turn again. And the only tune my guitar could play Was, "Oh the cruel rain and the wind."- Percy's Song
||- || The song "Anathea" tells a similar story to "Seven Curses." To quote the late John Bauldie: "The song's story is as old as the hills - the tale used by Shakespeare for Measure for Measure is an obvious variant - and it's been told in folk song many times down the years, under such titles as 'The Prickley Bush,' 'The Briery Bush,' and 'The Prickle Holly Bush.' Perhaps the earliest version is the Child Ballad number 95, 'The Maid Freed From the Gallows,' but it seems likely that Dylan's direct source was a song called "Anathea," often performed by Judy Collins, whom Dylan knew well at this time." (From Bauldie's notes for The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3)
When asked about this, Judy Collins agreed: "Absolutely, the seven curses are related to Anathea. There are old themes, world themes, centuries' old dramas that get worked out in the creative process by artist after artist. I see what Dylan has always done is to connect with this inner, subterranean river of the subconscious."||
- || The tune and lyrics to "Restless Farewell" were both based on "The Parting Glass," a traditional Irish song that he probably learnt from The Clancy Brothers.
O, all the money e'er I had I spent it in good company And all the harm I've ever done Alas! it was to none but me.- The Parting Glass
Oh all the money that in my whole life I did spend, Be it mine right or wrongfully, I let it slip gladly past the hands of my friends To tie up the time most forcefully.- Restless Farewell
Dylan reportedly wrote this song hastily in the studio as a suitable closer to his 1964 album, The Times They Are A-Changin' album and did not perform it again until 1995 when Frank Sinatra requested it as the closing song in his 80th Birthday Concert. Although some of the lines are clumsy (particularly when compared to the graceful original), it still made for a far more touching declaration of independence than "My Way."||
- || "Jack O'Diamonds" was one of the "some other kind of songs" poems printed on the sleeve of Another Side of Bob Dylan and set to music by Fairport Convention, though Fairport's music has little connection with the original Mance Lipscomb version.
Mance Lipscomb wrote "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" (also known as "Baby, Let Me Lay It on You") which Dylan sang on his debut album. Lipscomb claims to have taught the song to Dylan while Dylan states (in a spoken introduction on the album) that he learnt it from Rick von Schmidt.For more information on Mance Lipscomb, go to his marvellous autobiography (published by Norton) I Say Me For A Parable, or to any of his recordings released on CD by Arhoolie.
||
- || By 1965, Dylan had absorbed an enormous amount of traditional and quasi-traditional material, but it is from this time that we see him start to incorporate the influence of more contemporary works. Chuck Berry has, with good reason, been called the first poet of rock and roll, and his "Too Much Monkey Business" (1957) is a perfect example of his mastery of colloquial American English. Dylan takes Berry's rapid-fire approach to the language and ups the stakes:
Workin' in the fillin' station Too many tasks Wipe the windows Check the tires Check the oil Dollar gas!- Too Much Monkey Business
Ah get born, keep warm, Short pants, romance. Learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed Try to be a success. Please her, please him, buy gifts Don't steal, don't lift - Twenty years of schoolin' And they put you on the day shift- Subterranean Homesick Blues
||Classic Bands
James, Gary. "Bob Dylan." Classic Bands. Gary James (Classic Bands.com), November 2000. Web. 29 Apr 2010. <http://www.classicbands.com/dylan.html>.
http://www.classicbands.com/dylan.html